I'm a jack of all trades.

And master of

The Universe!

I've done a lot of different jobs and can do a lot of different things.
I guess that makes me a generalist. Or perhaps that means I have a short attention span. Although I don't think so.

There was lots of great free food at work today. It started with donuts in the morning, then finished with pies and then cake and then ice cream in the afternoon.

Or perhaps that means I have a short attention span. Although I don't think so.
I have a huge attention span. I just like to give lots of different things my attention.

Maybe that makes me a Renaissance Man. Or a nuisance man.

Anyway.

I feel I can now truly add Englush Tuter to my list.

I have just picked up a new student to tutor, following on from the one I helped out for four years of high school. The new one is from Guangzhou and is a university student. I doubled my fees for this new student. I felt a little guilty about that, but it turns out she is more than willing to pay it, and actually wants to come at least twice a week.

She has a rich daddy and needs to do well this year, so she can transfer to a course that she really wants to study, but didn't have enough credits for.

So that's a lot of tax-free cash going into my pocket. So, hooooray! for rich parents.

It's great to have ways to make extra money outside of one's day job.

I have a lot of options. Mostly though, I can't be arsed. And I do OK out of my day job to support my family, and I'm not really motivated enough by money to go out and get all that I can.

But it's good to know that I have plenty of other avenues I could consider on that day that my company finally realises I just turn up to eat free donuts and cakes and ice cream and fires me.

Some of the jobs I've done include:

* Hunter
(this was my first job, which started as a kid. I would trap possums – considered vermin in this country, but protected in the always-weird land of Australia – then sell their pelts. I also used to skin calves and cows if they died, so that their loss wasn't a complete loss of money. One of the biggest Freak Outs in my life was the time I was sent out to skin a cow and then discovered just as I started putting the knife in that the cow wasn't dead. The cow wasn't dead. !!!

During my hunting days, I nearly shot myself in the foot. I also almost shot my neighbour in the head. He jumped up in front of me as I was about to take a shot. Part of me wanted to pull the trigger just to teach him for being so stupid.
I gave up hunting, following a wild goat incident. I'd been picking off goats for a couple of hours. Then I came across a baby goat (I was going to say “kid”, but that might have been a bit ambiguous for some of you) that had gotten separated from the herd and something inside of me snapped and I then spent the next hour tracking down the rest of the goats so I could reunite the kid with it's mother. After I had, I walked away and haven't hunted another animal since. I don't even have a gun licence anymore.
Wow. That was a weirdly pathetic story.)

* Squash packer.
(I said “squash”. Not “fudge”. Stop it with the jokes already.)

* Truck driver.
(Sometimes it pays not to tell people you have a heavy vehicle licence, because then they want you to drive heavy vehicles for them.)

* Ninja for hire
(32 successful kills, 11 TKOs.)

* Women's self-defence dummy
(This meant getting kicked in the nuts. A lot. And groin guards do jack. How I was able to have kids is a surprise. At least, she says they're my kids. Hmmmm…)

* Security guard
(for drag racing. I got to watch the racing, but it sucked having to keep drunken petrol head bogans back behind the safety fence.)

* Haymaker
(but only when the sun was shining.)

* Farmer
(thank Ganesha! that I got accepted into journalism school, otherwise I might have ended up becoming, and smelling like, a farmer. I want to move back out to the country someday, but I do not want to be, or smell like, a farmer.)

* Reporter
(I guess you sort of have to, if you go to journalism school and don't want to become a farmer…)

* Photojournalist
(the skills learned here came in useful years later for convincing a chick that I was a freelance photographer for Penthouse magazine.)

* Radio somethingorother
(I got paid to go on air and talk about books and interview authors. I wasn't paid to make insulting comments. I did that for free.)

* Catering
(17-23 hour days. Sleep deprivation. I saw bats flying out of fridges by the end of the four months I spent doing this. Underpaid. But it was great fun. I was in charge of the portering for one of Elton John's annual parties. I managed to smash a whole bunch of expensive glasses just as he got up to start singing. Then I did a burnout in a truck on his grass. That was cool.)

* Personal Assistant
(Executive level. This was a lot of fun. It's essentially managing a manager. And one of the women general managers I worked for said my shorthand and my dictation were impressive. Even though my hands are not short. So what the hell was she talking about?)

* High Performance Car Driver
(for a car magazine. Fantastic job. $150 cash in hand a day, plus expenses. Personally insured for millions, in case anything went wrong. They didn't do a very good background check though, as I didn't actually have a valid driver's license for that particular country. Fortunately, I was never required to present it. Even when the cops turned up after a grumpy farmer called up to complain that we were scaring his sheep…)

* Lou Reed's Transvestite Concubine
(neither of us likes to publicly acknowledge this year in his life.)

* Graphic designer
(this is where you Photoshop the heads of people you hate onto the bodies of primates and orcs.)

* Dealer
(I hooked a friend up with some weed. He insisted on paying for it and I insisted that it was free. Weeks later I discovered that he'd slipped some cash inside a cigar box when I wasn't looking. Bastard! So that technically makes me a dealer.
One day I want to get paid for sex. D-Missus keeps saying the cheque is in the mail, but I might have to cut her off soon, as it's been like over a decade and I still haven't seen any payment for service! The bill must be up to over a couple of hundred bucks by now.)

* Father
(probably my favourite job. I don't technically get paid, but I do get a day of acknowledgement for service, so that's cool. And I get to play with Lego. And Playdough. Rock. On.)

* Landscaper
(I may be starting up a small business relating to this in the future. I have a big potential client and it would only require a day's work a month once the initial landscaping had been done. Although I was mentioning this to people at work and I've already had inquiries to go look at their gardens... )

D-Missus would also like to start up a lawnmowing business, so that could be related in some way. Although I can't see how that would work too well, considering she can't start the bloody lawnmower at home without calling out for me to help her. Bah. Plus, I was mowing the lawns on Wednesday and the damn thing caught on fire, so it really is a dangerous line of business.
That said … I had a great idea for a business venture the other day. A lawnmowing company, where chicks in bikinis go out and mow people's lawns. There could also be guys in Speedos for the lady-clients, I guess. )

Anyway.

Try fitting all that on a business card.

That's why my personal one only has my phone number and the message:

“I do stuff”.

Some smart bastard has already added an “all” to the end of that sentence. But it's not defamation if it's true, I guess…